3-Minute Elevator Pitch

Now that I have your attention, you may be asking, “What’s an Elevator Pitch?” Well, as National Best Seller author, Terri L. Sjodin explains in her book Small Message, Big Impact, it’s the balance of getting your point across to a client within 3 minutes using Monroe’s Motivated Sequence as the foundation of your pitch.

What’s Monroe’s Motivated Sequence? A time-tested and flexible organization pattern to help you with any type of pitch: long or short.

A. Get Attention: State ‘their’ problem

B. Satisfaction: Satisfy the need to solve said problem by offering a solution and show how the plan works.

C. Visualization: project them into the future by describing themselves enjoying the potential benefits they will receive once the plan is adopted.

D. Action: translate the desire from the visualization step into overt action. Tell the client/audience what they need to do ‘today’ and exactly ‘how’ to do it.

E. Close: briefly explain what you will do once they’ve made the choice to move forward.

I highly recommend this book as it gives such specifics on how to create your own personal 3-Minute Elevator Pitch, but also gives the foundation on which to build longer presentations as well. http://www.sjodincommunications.com/?pg=whatsnew

I’m still in the process of creating my speech and my hope is this can help you with yours.

Why should I bother? Isn’t this a lot of work? This is critical, since time is of the essence and many times, you only have a few minutes with a potential client. This is a way to get the longer appointment at a later date.